The young Essene dropped to his knees without a word, thrust his hand
into the embroidered tunic and felt for the prince's heart. It beat
but slowly. Vasti, meanwhile, snatched the torch from the staff and
beat the charred pitch knot on the ground till the still inflammable
heart broke open and ignited afresh.
By its light Marsyas examined Agrippa. Between the prince's shoulders,
his hand touched chilling blood.
"Ambushed!" he said grimly. "Stabbed in the back!"
Marsyas looked at the prince's right hand. It was still clenched, and
the flesh on the knuckles was abraded, the second joints swelling fast.
Vasti, with suspicion in her olive eyes, carried the torch over to the
contorted shape. Then she made a sign to Marsyas. He looked. It was
an Egyptian wearing the livery of Flaccus. The prince's Arabic dagger
was neatly buried to the hilt in the servitor's breast. Vasti examined
the second prostrate form. By her torch Marsyas saw that it was
Eutychus, conscious but benumbed. His left ear, cheek and eye were
swollen and black.
"It seems," said Marsyas, stanching Agrippa's wound, "that the prince
disabled his own support!"
But Vasti, by deft twitches of ear and hair and threats in Hindu,
significant in tone if not in speech to the charioteer, finally got
Eutychus upon his feet.
"Take up the prince," she said to Marsyas. "The slave may follow or
lie as he chooses. I shall attend my mistress."
Marsyas lifted the Herod and, following Vasti, hurried on again into
the darkness. The bayadere made toward the sea-front, not many yards
distant, sped across the wharf and over the edge apparently into the
water. Marsyas, by this time ready to follow the brown woman into any
extreme, plunged after her. He landed abruptly in the bottom of a
punt. Lydia followed, and Eutychus, with an alacrity not expected of
one who groaned so helplessly.
Vasti severed the rope that tied up the boat, and, with a strong thrust
of her hands against the piling, pushed the boat away from the wharf.
But she did not take up the oars. She left them to Marsyas, trained on
the blue waters of Galilee.
In a moment he had pulled out into the black expanse of the bay, and,
with the prince's ship in mind, rowed among the sleeping shipping.
"How came the prince in this plight?" Marsyas demanded of Eutychus.
The charioteer, with his head in his hands, groaned and murmured
unintelligibly. Lydia dipped an end of the wonderful silk that
enveloped her into the water and pressed the wet corner to the
charioteer's temples.
Marsyas frowned blackly.
"Nay, but thou canst answer, Eutychus," he said shortly.
After further murmurings, the charioteer brought out between groans an
avowal that he was completely mystified.
"How came Agrippa in the street?" Marsyas insisted.